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RANDY SHILTS, the author of the best-selling book about AIDS "And the Band Played On," announced yesterday that he has the disease. Mr. Shilts, who is 41, divulged his condition in an interview conducted late last week and printed yesterday in The San Francisco Chronicle.

A national correspondent for the newspaper, Mr. Shilts explained that he learned in 1985, "on the day that I pulled the last sheet from the typewriter of 'And the Band Played On,' " that he was infected with the virus. The book traced, in chilling detail, the evolution of AIDS from an obscure and mainly ignored condition to a nationwide epidemic.

Mr. Shilts said he had decided not to disclose his condition publicly until now for fear that it would diminish his effectiveness in reporting.

"Every gay writer who tests positive ends up being an AIDS activist," Mr. Shilts told Leah Garchik, the Chronicle staff writer who interviewed him, "and I didn't want to end up being an activist. I wanted to keep on being a reporter."

Mr. Shilts has just completed his third book, "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military." It will be released by St. Martin's Press, the publisher of his two previous books, around Memorial Day. Seven weeks ago, when he was nearing completion of the book, he suffered a collapsed lung that forced him to suspend writing. Friends and associates helped him finish it. He is now recuperating and in physical therapy at an undisclosed location, said Claudia Riemer, publicity director for St. Martin's Press.

A star-studded television version of "And the Band Played On" will be shown on HBO in late summer, and plans are under way to film his first book, "The Mayor of Castro Street."

Mr. Shilts said he decided to discuss his physical condition now because of a deluge of calls from gay people and the press. "I want to talk about it myself rather than have somebody else talk," he said.

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